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In the course of work as an instructional designers, its routine to trawl the web constantly looking at ways people visualize ideas, concepts, processes. It’s an entire wonderland of variety out there on the inter-webs, in addition to the beauty one finds in various books on graphic design. Right now, the visual.ly You might want to try it. MORE

With all the politician in DC trying to balance the budget, I bet I can do a better job, and I get the chance with this neat little game that lets me get a taste of balancing the United States Budget. Play it and you can enjoy creating your own plan for the federal budget. See if you can create a budget based on your values, without busting the federal bank. Give it a try at Budget Hero. Games MORE

It’s often been said that one of the best ways to learn a subject is to attempt to teach it to others. Whereas a hazy, half-developed understanding of something might be good enough to allow you to squeak by on your own, to be able to teach a topic requires all-around mastery of the material. . The result is a division of labor that is more productive and manageable in scope. MORE

I feel some guilty pleasure when other trainers and elearning developers become jealous of my elearning app for the iPad. Because the Mac iOS doesn’t support Flash, many of my colleagues haven’t been able to take advantage of the best elearning tool ever: the iPad. My app did not cost that much ($7,000 developed in 2010 and $4000 for upgrades in 2011). Still, even those costs are not readily available to many training teams. So, I will share my first efforts making elearning for the iPad. It still works very well and gets “oohs and ahhs even though it is simple and FREE. MORE

After the last post, a few people discussed in the comments about how you actually go about adding friction to learning. Kathy Sierra in particular referenced Dan Meyer , a math teacher/blogger, who is my favorite resource on this. He doesn’t specifically reference friction, but he talks about how to “be less helpful for learners. This is a really nice short video where he explains some of things he does to create interesting challenges for his learners: [link MORE

Sorry about the dearth of postings over the past month. Between a project go live at work, and then two weeks in Europe for some much needed vacation, NorthstarNerd.Org has taken a back seat. promise some new posts about Android, iPad apps for the Road Warrior, and Google Search in the days and weeks ahead, but in the meantime enjoy some updates from my vacation. And my cycling jersey. Hodge Podg MORE

by AJ George. Trond Kristiansen's eLearning Devcon 2011 session, Using Photographic Techniques In eLearning , really got the rusty gears of creativity in my brain churning about how to incorporate some photographic techniques into eLearning. I've previously covered how to easily manipulate stock images , but Trond's ideas were decidedly more high brow.and fun. It had never before occurred to me to incorporate time-lapse or stop motion techniques into eLearning. Now that it's been presented to me I am flooded with ideas where this could be really dynamic in learning modules. MORE

It concerns me how a lot of the social learning conversation seems to veer around the tools in the space. Tools are arriving thick and fast and yeah, it's easy to get caught up with all the bling. And this is not to say that I'm never excited by tools - nothing could be far from the truth. This said, social learning is less about the technology and more about the human interaction. Sumeet Moghe. MORE

by Jennie Ruby. Last week I wrote an article about checklists. As I finish reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande , I have learned that in fields where the individual expert is seen as the key to success, resistance to the idea of using a checklist is rampant. Surgery and financial management are two fields where adoption of checklists has been slow, despite the fact that checklists work. In one study, the use of a pre-surgery checklist decreased the number of patients suffering complications by 50%. Nevertheless, surgeons have been slow to adopt the use of checklists. MORE

A client asked me today about approaches to evaluation, and this got me thinking about how advocates of different approaches get very dogmatic about what works and what doesn’t work. Kaliym Islam, in Developing and Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way , says “none of the four levels in the Kirkpatrick model capture business feedback or business reaction to the training product”. MORE

It’s old news that Blackboard has been acquired by a private equity firm for $1.64 billion. An education company being acquired is hardly novel – we are entering a period of dramatic change in education and the change will largely be led from outside of the education system. billion – that is novel. Why is Blackboard worth that much? If you speak with academics and students, the product and company is almost universally disliked. This largely stems from their D2L lawsuit a few years ago and the concerns that generated around patents in the educational technology market. MORE

During my undergraduate degree programme, I remember assembling with a small group of fellow students in a room to start our new module on social psychology. We knew our new lecturer's name, but beyond that we knew very little about her. So we sat and waited for her to appear. And we sat and waited. It's amazing how paranoid psychology students can become. This is the real me', she smiled. MORE

Rothenburg ob der Tauber (RodT) is a charming small town that has retained it’s medieval nature through both design and chance. The story is interesting, but more interesting for my purposes here is how You can learn that story. One of the opportunities available in Rothenburg is the Night Watchman’s Tour, where a local dressed up as a night watchman walks you through various stops around town and tells Rothenburg’s history. You pay at the end, so you could skip paying, but after the experience it is definitely worth the money. . Also interesting is the story-telling style. MORE

Tweet Formal education exploded as we moved into the industrial age one hundred years ago, with larger organisations demanding Taylorist job functions. As the industrial age gives way to a networked age, there is less need for well-defined, cookie-cutter jobs. This was my concluding paragraph on a 2006 blog post, Informal economy; informal learning. economy — Silicon Valley. MORE

Sales representatives can find themselves in a difficult position when it comes to training. All reps need it, but an ineffective sales training class provides little more than the kind of time-suck reps can hardly afford. Here’s what one should avoid when setting up training and how reps can clearly communicate to managers what they need to help them sell. We discussed sales training. MORE

The face of the new economy is propelled by collaboration; I’ve told you this before. But there’s an aspect of teamwork that’s going unnoticed — sharing. I had a chance to speak with Meagan and Larry Johnson earlier this year for an article on desegregating an aging workforce, in which Larry commented: “The challenge is creating a multigenerational workforce that works well [together]. This means challenging our perceptions of how we motivate people or how we expect them to work.”. It spans from personal to professional sharing. Sharing isn’t limited to records, however. Let’s talk Google. MORE

Today I thought I’d share with you an example of how our eLearning Game Templates can be customized in Adobe Flash. took only about 10 minutes to come up with new look for the Marathon game. just wanted to show you that all of the elements in these game templates can easily be modified. Here is a link to our Flash Game Tutorials page. Click each example below to demo. MORE

In the course of work as an instructional designers, its routine to trawl the web constantly looking at ways people visualize ideas, concepts, processes. It’s an entire wonderland of variety out there on the inter-webs, in addition to the beauty one finds in various books on graphic design. Right now, the visual.ly You might want to try it.

by AJ George. Trond Kristiansen's eLearning Devcon 2011 session, Using Photographic Techniques In eLearning , really got the rusty gears of creativity in my brain churning about how to incorporate some photographic techniques into eLearning. I've previously covered how to easily manipulate stock images , but Trond's ideas were decidedly more high brow.and fun. It had never before occurred to me to incorporate time-lapse or stop motion techniques into eLearning. Now that it's been presented to me I am flooded with ideas where this could be really dynamic in learning modules.

It’s often been said that one of the best ways to learn a subject is to attempt to teach it to others. Whereas a hazy, half-developed understanding of something might be good enough to allow you to squeak by on your own, to be able to teach a topic requires all-around mastery of the material. . The result is a division of labor that is more productive and manageable in scope.

It concerns me how a lot of the social learning conversation seems to veer around the tools in the space. Tools are arriving thick and fast and yeah, it's easy to get caught up with all the bling. And this is not to say that I'm never excited by tools - nothing could be far from the truth. This said, social learning is less about the technology and more about the human interaction. Sumeet Moghe.

Download one of the most popular game templates from eLearning Brothers with a look and feel exclusively made for eLearning Learning subscribers! eLearning Brothers creates awesome templates and assets to help you look like an eLearning Rockstar!

Tweet Formal education exploded as we moved into the industrial age one hundred years ago, with larger organisations demanding Taylorist job functions. As the industrial age gives way to a networked age, there is less need for well-defined, cookie-cutter jobs. This was my concluding paragraph on a 2006 blog post, Informal economy; informal learning. economy — Silicon Valley.

It’s old news that Blackboard has been acquired by a private equity firm for $1.64 billion. An education company being acquired is hardly novel – we are entering a period of dramatic change in education and the change will largely be led from outside of the education system. billion – that is novel. Why is Blackboard worth that much? If you speak with academics and students, the product and company is almost universally disliked. This largely stems from their D2L lawsuit a few years ago and the concerns that generated around patents in the educational technology market.

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Tweet Formal education exploded as we moved into the industrial age one hundred years ago, with larger organisations demanding Taylorist job functions. As the industrial age gives way to a networked age, there is less need for well-defined, cookie-cutter jobs. This was my concluding paragraph on a 2006 blog post, Informal economy; informal learning. economy — Silicon Valley.

It’s old news that Blackboard has been acquired by a private equity firm for $1.64 billion. An education company being acquired is hardly novel – we are entering a period of dramatic change in education and the change will largely be led from outside of the education system. billion – that is novel. Why is Blackboard worth that much? If you speak with academics and students, the product and company is almost universally disliked. This largely stems from their D2L lawsuit a few years ago and the concerns that generated around patents in the educational technology market.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber (RodT) is a charming small town that has retained it’s medieval nature through both design and chance. The story is interesting, but more interesting for my purposes here is how You can learn that story. One of the opportunities available in Rothenburg is the Night Watchman’s Tour, where a local dressed up as a night watchman walks you through various stops around town and tells Rothenburg’s history. You pay at the end, so you could skip paying, but after the experience it is definitely worth the money. . Also interesting is the story-telling style.

I feel some guilty pleasure when other trainers and elearning developers become jealous of my elearning app for the iPad. Because the Mac iOS doesn’t support Flash, many of my colleagues haven’t been able to take advantage of the best elearning tool ever: the iPad. My app did not cost that much ($7,000 developed in 2010 and $4000 for upgrades in 2011). Still, even those costs are not readily available to many training teams. So, I will share my first efforts making elearning for the iPad. It still works very well and gets “oohs and ahhs even though it is simple and FREE.

Sales representatives can find themselves in a difficult position when it comes to training. All reps need it, but an ineffective sales training class provides little more than the kind of time-suck reps can hardly afford. Here’s what one should avoid when setting up training and how reps can clearly communicate to managers what they need to help them sell. We discussed sales training.

by Jennie Ruby. Last week I wrote an article about checklists. As I finish reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande , I have learned that in fields where the individual expert is seen as the key to success, resistance to the idea of using a checklist is rampant. Surgery and financial management are two fields where adoption of checklists has been slow, despite the fact that checklists work. In one study, the use of a pre-surgery checklist decreased the number of patients suffering complications by 50%. Nevertheless, surgeons have been slow to adopt the use of checklists.

The face of the new economy is propelled by collaboration; I’ve told you this before. But there’s an aspect of teamwork that’s going unnoticed — sharing. I had a chance to speak with Meagan and Larry Johnson earlier this year for an article on desegregating an aging workforce, in which Larry commented: “The challenge is creating a multigenerational workforce that works well [together]. This means challenging our perceptions of how we motivate people or how we expect them to work.”. It spans from personal to professional sharing. Sharing isn’t limited to records, however. Let’s talk Google.

During my undergraduate degree programme, I remember assembling with a small group of fellow students in a room to start our new module on social psychology. We knew our new lecturer's name, but beyond that we knew very little about her. So we sat and waited for her to appear. And we sat and waited. It's amazing how paranoid psychology students can become. This is the real me', she smiled.

With all the politician in DC trying to balance the budget, I bet I can do a better job, and I get the chance with this neat little game that lets me get a taste of balancing the United States Budget. Play it and you can enjoy creating your own plan for the federal budget. See if you can create a budget based on your values, without busting the federal bank. Give it a try at Budget Hero. Games

After the last post, a few people discussed in the comments about how you actually go about adding friction to learning. Kathy Sierra in particular referenced Dan Meyer , a math teacher/blogger, who is my favorite resource on this. He doesn’t specifically reference friction, but he talks about how to “be less helpful for learners. This is a really nice short video where he explains some of things he does to create interesting challenges for his learners: [link

Curious to learn how different factors in your training courses may affect completion rates? We crunched the numbers to help you set goals for course completion and build your content strategy. Download the study to learn what kind of content keeps learners engaged, how long courses should be, and more.

Today I thought I’d share with you an example of how our eLearning Game Templates can be customized in Adobe Flash. took only about 10 minutes to come up with new look for the Marathon game. just wanted to show you that all of the elements in these game templates can easily be modified. Here is a link to our Flash Game Tutorials page. Click each example below to demo.

A client asked me today about approaches to evaluation, and this got me thinking about how advocates of different approaches get very dogmatic about what works and what doesn’t work. Kaliym Islam, in Developing and Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way , says “none of the four levels in the Kirkpatrick model capture business feedback or business reaction to the training product”.

Sorry about the dearth of postings over the past month. Between a project go live at work, and then two weeks in Europe for some much needed vacation, NorthstarNerd.Org has taken a back seat. promise some new posts about Android, iPad apps for the Road Warrior, and Google Search in the days and weeks ahead, but in the meantime enjoy some updates from my vacation. And my cycling jersey. Hodge Podg